The Rabbit 5 1
while the rump and tail are high and dry. Rabbits can ascend trees to some
height if the stem is bent out of the perpendicular or the interior is hollow.
We should naturally expect the Rabbit, being a rodent, to make use of his
strong incisors to defend himself when handled and uninjured, but this is very
rarely the case, although I have seen a keeper bitten by one that was being
released from a ferret. Dogs, too, are sometimes bitten by Rabbits. Mr. J.
Simpson in his excellent book on the Rabbit1 states: * I have been bitten a
number of times by both tame and wild Rabbits— the latter in a tame state— and
on every occasion it happened when I had incautiously put my hand near a nest
of young. The doe sprang with a bound at my hand and gave it just one severe
grip. I got so well aware of this when a boy, that I used always to collar the
doe before putting my hand on the nest.’
The Rabbit will eat almost any green substance, and few things come amiss
to it in hard weather; I have even known them eat Rhododendron ponticum
in the winter of 1894. At first I was sceptical, as this flowering shrub is
generally considered to be Rabbit-proof, but the situation was such as to leave
no doubt as to the consumers. Grass is the main food, but they will eat all
cereals, young bracken when it first appears, and the leaves of many trees,
especially birch. In hard weather they will eat the bark and shoots of such shrubs
as laurels and privet, which would seem to be poisonous to most animals. In
winter they first attack all the fallen branches of trees, and if deep snow falls
and lasts for any time they gnaw the stems of holly, hazel, ash, birch, Scotch
fir, and young oak. In Scotland the first tree they always attack is the
common thorn, and I have seen old thorn trees stripped of their covering to a
height of eight and ten feet. In one wood at Murthly the entire stock of
thorns was destroyed by Rabbits during the severe winter of 1884. I do not
believe that there is any pine that Rabbits will not attack2 in really rigorous
weather, although foresters give dogmatic rules for the planting of certain Rabbit-
proof species. In Mr. Harting’s monograph8 on the Rabbit, he gives a list of the
various immune trees and shrubs such as are suitable for planting in game coverts,
and with this most people who have had practical experience will agree.
1 The Wild Rabbit in a New Aspect.
* R. B., writing in the Field, says: ‘ 1 remember Rabbits once attacked a small plantation of larch which had been
carefully painted twice over with a so-called infallible mixture against hares and Rabbits. They ate paint and bark, and a
keeper who trapped some told me that they smelt strongly of the mixture when opened. I may add that the mixture, though
recommended by a well-known firm, was almost as effectual in killing the larch as were the Rabbits.’
* * Fur, Feather, and Fin1 Series, pp. 29-34.